Page 15 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 15
r. c. hauhart ■ american dream studies in the 21st century
A page later he elaborates further by stating:
No, the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations
to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely mate-
rial plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily. It has been much
more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest devel-
opment as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had been
slowly erected in older civilizations, unimpressed by social orders which
had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human
being of any and every class. And the dream has been realized more ful-
ly in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even
among ourselves. (1933: p. 318)
Absent from Adams’ discourse is any discussion of upward mobility al-
though there is a statement about inequality: “There is no reason why
wealth, which is a social product, should not be more equitably controlled
and distributed in the interests of society.” (1933: p. 322)
While Adams does not address upward mobility directly, it is im-
plicit in his formulation that the American Dream is of a country where
each and every one may prosper. Prosperity, of course, is intimately con-
nected with the idea of economic success and it is this feature of the Amer-
ican Dream that has generated the greatest number of alternative concep-
tions attributed to it. The emphasis on prosperity, regardless of Adams’
strenuous objections to a vision of the United States that elevates mate-
rial success to the level of constituting Americans’ highest achievement,
has a long history within American culture and thought. The ‘success eth-
ic,’ has long been celebrated in American popular literature, where one
can ‘pull oneself up [in society] by one’s bootstraps.’ This idea was first
popularized, and then epitomized, by the Ragged Dick series of approxi-
mately 100 boys’ novels written by Horatio Alger, Jr. beginning in 1868.
Although Schamhorst (1980: pp. 75–6) contends that Ragged Dick’s am-
bition is properly read as a rise to respectability, and not pure desire for
riches, the Horatio Alger tales, as conceived in the popular imagination,
have devolved into paeans to the “success ethic” in the 150 years since their
first appearance.
This emphasis on economic success leading to upward mobility in
American culture is also found in Tocqueville’s examination of the Amer-
ican character in Democracy in America (1961), first published in the 1830’s.
However, Tocqueville’s view was less sanguine than Horatio Alger’s.
Tocqueville found that Americans’ desire to fulfill every material want,
quench every physical desire, acquire every newly invented means of do-
ing so, and struggle to rise above the mass of common men was doomed to
13
A page later he elaborates further by stating:
No, the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations
to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely mate-
rial plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily. It has been much
more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest devel-
opment as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had been
slowly erected in older civilizations, unimpressed by social orders which
had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human
being of any and every class. And the dream has been realized more ful-
ly in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even
among ourselves. (1933: p. 318)
Absent from Adams’ discourse is any discussion of upward mobility al-
though there is a statement about inequality: “There is no reason why
wealth, which is a social product, should not be more equitably controlled
and distributed in the interests of society.” (1933: p. 322)
While Adams does not address upward mobility directly, it is im-
plicit in his formulation that the American Dream is of a country where
each and every one may prosper. Prosperity, of course, is intimately con-
nected with the idea of economic success and it is this feature of the Amer-
ican Dream that has generated the greatest number of alternative concep-
tions attributed to it. The emphasis on prosperity, regardless of Adams’
strenuous objections to a vision of the United States that elevates mate-
rial success to the level of constituting Americans’ highest achievement,
has a long history within American culture and thought. The ‘success eth-
ic,’ has long been celebrated in American popular literature, where one
can ‘pull oneself up [in society] by one’s bootstraps.’ This idea was first
popularized, and then epitomized, by the Ragged Dick series of approxi-
mately 100 boys’ novels written by Horatio Alger, Jr. beginning in 1868.
Although Schamhorst (1980: pp. 75–6) contends that Ragged Dick’s am-
bition is properly read as a rise to respectability, and not pure desire for
riches, the Horatio Alger tales, as conceived in the popular imagination,
have devolved into paeans to the “success ethic” in the 150 years since their
first appearance.
This emphasis on economic success leading to upward mobility in
American culture is also found in Tocqueville’s examination of the Amer-
ican character in Democracy in America (1961), first published in the 1830’s.
However, Tocqueville’s view was less sanguine than Horatio Alger’s.
Tocqueville found that Americans’ desire to fulfill every material want,
quench every physical desire, acquire every newly invented means of do-
ing so, and struggle to rise above the mass of common men was doomed to
13
